STORY BEHIND THE STORY: JOHN BROCKMAN’S WHAT SHOULD WE BE WORRIED ABOUT?

[12.1.13]

Edging Forward

The enticing collections roll in with impressive frequency, bearing such titles as This Will Change Everything(2009), Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? (2011), This Will Make You Smarter (2012), Thinking (2013), and the latest (review adjacent), What Should We Be Worried About? Each anthology features stellar contributors from diverse fields, and all are edited by John Brockman, the founder and CEO of Brockman Inc., a literary agency for science writers, and founder of a nonprofit foundation that supports Edge.org, a world-renowned online science salon with the credo: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." ...

The enticing collections roll in with impressive frequency, bearing such titles as This Will Change Everything[3](2009), Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? (2011), This Will Make You Smarter (2012), Thinking (2013), and the latest (review adjacent), What Should We Be Worried About?[4] Each anthology features stellar contributors from diverse fields, and all are edited by John Brockman, the founder and CEO of Brockman Inc., a literary agency for science writers, and founder of a nonprofit foundation that supports Edge.org, a world-renowned online science salon with the credo: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." ...

...Brockman, who is also an author, finds that books are still the best place for scientists to present their work. "Increasing complexity is leading to an entirely new way of doing science, one in which all kinds of disciplines come together in various endeavors, and scientists have to be able to talk each other's language. Their trade books reflect this; they have to write in a way that's understandable to their intelligent colleagues. That's the hallmark of these new books. They are not popular science. This is science being presented by the scientist for people outside his or her field but still within the scientific community." Just the same, any curious reader can benefit from and be enthralled by Brockman's stimulating, jargon-free Edge books.